The Man From the Train is a true crime book by Bill James and his daughter Rachel McCarthy James, in which the James’ lay out the case for discovery of a previously unrealized/overlooked serial killer in North America from the 1890s until about 1912.
Bill James, a baseball historian and statistician by trade, originally started his research in an attempt to solve the Villisca axe murders, which were the rather famous unsolved murders of an entire family in Villisca, Iowa in June 1912.
In the course of investigating the Villisca murders, James expanded his search to similar cases in the United States during that time frame – and found a lot. Like, I thought it was a surprisingly large number of family murders. From 1890 to 1912, there were approximately 8 entire families murdered per year in the United States. James gave this number as average. Most of these murders were not related to the murders the James’ connected in this book – the murders linked in this book involved several pieces of evidence present/reported on at all the scenes but not linked as a pattern by law enforcement at the time. Sharing information was hard to begin with due to distance, plus law enforcement can be territorial, and most law enforcement believed there was a local connection between the dead families and whoever killed them. You can understand their reasoning. Why would you wipe out an entire family for what appeared to be no reason?
The James’ found family murders that occurred in Nova Scotia, Arkansas, Oregon, Kansas, Florida and other locations that all fit certain patterns: all of the families lived only a few hundred feet from railroad junctions in small towns with little to no police force, none of the families had a dog to warn of an intruder, the families had barns where the killer probably spent a few days watching them first, the murder weapon was always the blunt edge of an axe, the victims were usually covered with a sheet before being killed (probably to prevent spatter), the axe was left in plain sight, the bodies were moved/stacked after death, the parents almost never showed signs of a struggle but the young girls usually did, there was no apparent robbery, and some other details that consistently showed up throughout the linked crimes. James believed the motive for/major factor in the murders was a sadistic attraction to prepubescent girls – hence the girls frequently showed signed of a struggle and signs that they’d been molested after death, and that the killer had ejaculated at the scene. (Gross).
They eventually reveal a suspect in the case – an immigrant named Paul Mueller. Mueller is only ever linked to the case of a murdered family in West Brookfield, Massachusetts by contemporary sources at the time, but a physical description of a short but well built German immigrant who spoke little English and who was a German veteran of WWI appears in a local paper. He had unusually small and wide spaced teeth, and worked as an itinerant lumberjack with good wood working and carpentry skills. Considering most of the family murders investigated by James took place in or near logging communities and with an axe, the possibility of Mueller jumping on and off trains for jobs in different parts of the country and murdering an entire family as a hobby isn’t implausible.
The only year the James’ didn’t find any family murders who fit the pattern was 1908, leading them to speculate the man from the train was imprisoned for a minor crime during that time. The murders stop not long after the Villsca murders, and the James’ believe Mueller may have left the States when private investigators and the media begin to call attention to the fact that a single person may have been traveling on the nation’s railway system and killing people at an alarming rate. They’re fairly confident the same person committed at least 14 family murders for a total of 59 victims, and are less certain of his involvement in another 25 for a total of 93 victims. They also ruled out the man from the train from being the Axeman of New Orleans. Same fun axe but different patterns at the crime scenes.
James also goes into the consequences of some of these murders – one particularly haunting story was in the deep South (Georgia? Florida?) where a couple of black men (including a mentally challenged man) were lynched for a family murder the man from the train probably committed. Police targeted them and harassed them into confessing, telling the man with the IQ of a seven year old if he just tells them he did it, he can go home – you know , all the usual heartbreaking fun you find in these recurrent nightmare stories of criminal “justice” in the United States.
As one last thing to think about, James calls attention to the 1922 Hinterkaifeck murders in Germany, noting the similarities between that family murder and the murders committed by the man from the train. Again, James theorizes Mueller left the United States when the family murders began being linked by journalists and private investigators in 1911. Since we know serial killers don’t stop unless they’re caught or die, it’s not impossible Mueller committed these murders too, although there’s no proof. Even James admitted it was a toss up.
I found this book really compelling, and for whatever reason, very scary. Just the idea of someone jumping off a train, hiding in your barn/house for days/weeks/months, watching your every move, then murdering whole families was so creepy and upsetting to me. Scholars of this sort of thing find James’ & McCarthy James’ theory plausible and even the best possibility for solving the Villisca murders. It’s safe to say that after 110+ years, we’ll never know what happened for sure, but the case for a serial killer who went undetected for two decades is quite compelling here. And as we know, the term “serial killer” wasn’t used until decades later and are weren’t understood (better understood, anyway) until much later.
The writing could be a bit informal at times, but for the most part I found the writing engaging and interesting. I highly recommend The Man From the Train. Is some of it speculating? Yes. But while the named suspect (Paul Mueller) might not be correct, I think the case that the same person committed multiple family murders over a vast swath of North America has more than been made here. Fascinating book, wonderful job by Bill James and his daughter.
Category Archives: non-fiction
The Man From the Train
Calypso
Calypso is the latest of David Sedaris’ collections of essays that I listened to on audiobook. As always, I liked it, but some of these essay collections are becoming a bit repetitive? I don’t know if it’s because I’ve heard so many of Sedaris’ stories before or if it’s because they’re really repeating, but I felt like I knew several of these pretty well already, including ‘Now We Are Five,’ which Sedaris wrote after his youngest sister, Tiffany, committed suicide.
Anyway, in spite of the fact that I felt like I had heard some of these stories before, this is an excellent collection of stories. Sedaris’ observation of the world around us and his wit in interpreting them and sharing them, are not fading as he ages. And this book is very much about middle age and the stark reality that most of his future is now behind him.
Anyway, Calypso did not disappoint. I very much loved listening to Sedaris’ tell us about getting a stomach bug while on a book tour and his realization that his body will eventually betray him. It was a darkly funny book that offered belly laughs.
Food: A Love Story
This isn’t my first of Jim Gaffigan’s books so I knew what I was getting into when I signed up. Sure enough, it is Jim Gaffigan talking about food he enjoys.
This book is enjoyable, I enjoy Gaffigan’s self-deprecating sense of humor and his admiration of his wife. I also appreciate his love of food and his rather dark sense of humor on appetites in the United States:
If aliens studied Earth, they would come to the conclusion that the United States is somehow consuming food on behalf of other countries.
The problem I ran into with this book wasn’t the book itself but the audiobook narration. I love Gaffigan’s standup routines, but Gaffigan talks a little too fast for his audiobooks in my opinion. He’s funny, don’t get me wrong, I just wish he’d slow down a bit. It does give off the stream of consciousness impression rather than the “I’m reading a book” impression, I just don’t always love it.
That said, the text is very funny and Gaffigan did make me laugh quite a bit, so even if the audiobook narration wasn’t my favorite, it didn’t ruin the experience.
Carrie Fisher’s Shockaholic & Wishful Drinking
Shockaholic and Wishful Drinking are separate books by Carrie Fisher. I listened to The Princess Diarist not long after Fisher died, and as much as I enjoyed it, I ended up putting off reading these other two books. There are certain celebrity deaths that I am affected by, and Carrie Fisher is one of those (the other that immediately comes to mind is Robin Williams). But in 2019 I finally read both, back to back.
Wishful Drinking is the older book, a short book based on Fisher’s one woman show, and it was very funny. Fisher’s books are sort of dysfunctional memoirs. Fisher loves to highlight not only how wild her outside life was, but also how wild her inner life was, as she had bipolar disorder as well as struggling with substance abuse. Shockaholic continues on these themes, and Fisher goes into detail regarding her time using electroshock therapy. She credits it with greatly improving her mental illness/depression.
Some of Fisher’s stories are completely absurd, but she is consistently funny in both books. Her wordplay is witty and sharp, and some of her funniest moments are her tangents. Some criticisms I’ve seen include that Fisher is a product of Hollywood and it shows, but she *is* a product of Hollywood, so wouldn’t in show? She does seem rather self-aware. Certain critics – usually male – also seem put off by her frank descriptions of her experience with mental illness, which I will never criticize anyone for, because it’s different for everyone.
These books are short and funny and very honest. Any Carrie Fisher fan should definitely read them. They’re great airplane material, especially if you want to upset a complete stranger next to you, giggling through your flight.
The Mayflower
Rebecca Fraser’s The Mayflower: The Families, The Voyage, and the Founding of America was the last history book I read in 2019. There is so much mythology surrounding the ship’s arrival in the Americas, and the subsequent events, that it’s sometimes hard to separate fact from fiction, and I thought it was worth it to spend some time around Thanksgiving dedicating some reading to it.
The Mayflower was a thorough look surrounding the families who came to America as well as their complicated relationships with the native people who were already here. Sourced with contemporary documents, Fraser’s work is culturally significant while also emphasizing the human element and the complex politics of the English, both on the Mayflower itself and the people who followed after. The friendship between Edward Winslow, one of the colonial leaders, and Massassoit, chief of the Wampanoags, was the driving force behind the first Thanksgiving. It is that friendship American school children act out of every year and what Americans should reflect on when regarding the history of their country before they sit down to a massive turkey dinner every year. One generation later, Edward’s son Josiah was leading the New England militias against Massassoit’s son in King Philip’s War.
I thought this book was really good for laying out a lot of background that the average person may not already know. The Winslows survival in America is a fascinating story that doesn’t really get told often enough, and the amplifying impact of the decisions the Winslows made is hardly explained at all.
I would recommend this book to someone who interested in a deeper understanding of the European migration to New England. It can be a bit tedious, so be aware of that going in, but I enjoyed the more in depth look at the European and Native American relationship.
The Templars
I decided that since I didn’t know anything about the Templars, this book was a decent place to begin. Dan Jones’ The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God’s Holy Warriors was a good overview of how the Templars came to be, what their purpose originally was, and how they became a target of a cynical plot that eventually brought their downfall.
The Templars are steeped in legend and myth, and part of the reason for this is that they weren’t accountable to any government at the time. They were their own organization with their own vast resources, were expert at channeling those resources across borders, and didn’t answer to king or country. Only to God. Their main mission as Christian warriors was to escort Christian pilgrims safely to the Holy Land after the First Crusade. They built a vast banking system and led private wars against those who threatened their own interests (frequently financial).
This level of power and money would become problematic later on, as they met their nemesis in Saladin who vowed to drive Christians from the lands of Islam, and who dealt a series of military setbacks. Ultimately, the greedy and vindictive King of France set his eyes on their fortune and arrested and tortured the knights into hiding and submission until ultimately they were tried by the Pope, convicted, and the last leader of the Templars tortured and burned at the stake.
In any narrative non-fiction book, you’re hoping to learn something. I went in with no real knowledge of the Templars except all the legends and myths about the Holy Grail and the Arc of the Covenant. Jones uses and interprets first hand sources, and strings together a narrative of a mysterious organization that were mysterious because they were wealthy, powerful, and secretive (like most mysterious organizations). I came out of it with a pretty good base of information on the Templars, who in the end got a pretty raw deal.
A Spy Among Friends
I have, on and off, read a bunch of Ben Macintye’s books, and this wasn’t the first, but it was the only one I read in 2019. Most of Macintyre’s projects involve writing about espionage during World War II and the Cold War, and this was no exception.
A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal is a biography of legendary Soviet spy and traitor Kim Philby, who worked in MI6 from 1941(ish) until 1951, and was the leader of the famous Cambridge Five Spy Ring (although recent accounts have claimed Guy Burgess was actually the leader). Charismatic and brilliant, Philby cultivated many relationships in Britain and the United States, and reported every word of his conversations with those people back to Moscow, betraying his coworkers, his country, and his friends. He was probably the most successful member of the Cambridge Five at passing secret information to the Soviets.
Sourced with personal papers and previously classified intelligence files, Macintyre tells an exciting espionage thriller. Philby is a fascinating character and Macintyre offers sharp psychological insight into his mind, offering possible motivations for his betrayals. I can’t remember exactly why he dedicated his life to communism and treachery, but it sounded noble, something about being for the equality of all people (or whatever).
With this in mind, I still rather disliked Philby. Maybe it was because he was betraying “my side” (as I am a daughter of the West) but I found Philby rather frightening. Macintyre never flat out says it, but Philby struck me as something of a sociopath, betraying undercover agents and Soviet defectors to Moscow without hesitation or regret.
One passage that I still remember, years later, was the story of Konstantin Volkov, the Vice Consul of the Soviet Consulate General in Istanbul. Long story short, Volkov offered to defect to the west, and promised to reveal several high ranking spies within British intelligence (probably Philby himself). Volkov’s case somehow came to Philby, who arranged to go to Istanbul to meet Volkov, but tipped off the Soviets to the traitor before doing so and delayed his arrival so the Soviets could essentially kidnap him, with horrific consequences for Volkov and his family. Macintyre writes:
“Konstantin Volkov left no traces: no photograph, no file in the Russian archives, no evidence about whether his motives were mercenary, personal or ideological. Neither his family, nor that of his wife, have ever emerged from the darkness of Stalin’s state. He had been right to assume that his relatives were doomed. Volkov was not merely liquidated, he was expunged.”
and
Philby showed no sympathy for Volkov, describing him as “a nasty piece of work” who “deserved what he got.”
Most of what we know about Volkov, actually I think *everything* we know, comes from British sources. Does anyone really deserve to have their entire family wiped out and basically be completely erased out of existence? I’d argue very few people actually deserve this. So yeah, Kim Philby. Great guy.
That said, I really, really enjoyed A Spy Among Friends. Macintyre is a master storyteller, suspenseful, fascinating, educational, and this was one of my favorite of his books, as well as one of my favorites of 2019. His other books I’d previously read were Agent Zigzag and Double Cross.
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
I’ve mentioned this here before, but not following my first dream of becoming a paleontologist is one of my great regrets. It was quite literally my first dream job – I wanted to start digging up dinosaur bones at the age of four and was constantly bringing home rocks so my dad and I could hammer them open and check for bones. My parents were indulgent of my obsession with rocks and bones, which I try to remember every time I am bitter that they wouldn’t send me for ice-skating lessons. I digress. Anyway, I am still interested in dinosaurs probably more than the average person but maybe not as much as the average enthusiastic child (myself as a 5-10 year old).
I did Stephen Brusatte’s The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World as an audiobook and I regret it for two reasons. The first reason is that I didn’t get to look at the photographs and illustrations. The second is I couldn’t skim the memoir parts. Brusatte clearly knows his stuff and loves dinosaurs, and I learned a lot from this book and greatly enjoyed the parts about dinosaurs. The memoir parts were sort of self-congratulatory and not so great? They were informative, just sort of annoying. He drops a bunch of names and while it’s fine, it feels egocentric after awhile.
Brusatte’s writing could also be a bit dry at times. It wasn’t terrible, mind you, I just sometimes felt he could have been using more engaging language. That said, I did feel like he enjoyed and loved dinosaurs too, which I felt a lot of value in. Textbooks are fine but I haven’t actually ever read a textbook I didn’t have to.
Anyway, if you like dinosaurs and want to read more about them, I recommend this book. If you don’t want to read a guy’s memoir where he drops names and congratulates himself for his achievements I also recommend this book but mostly skim those parts. Simple enough, right?
The Romanovs, 1613 – 1918
In the last few years I’ve read a couple of books by Simon Sebag Montefiore, and this one about the history of the Romanov dynasty was the first one.
I listened to this as an audiobook but I have to say, this one was pretty dense. I enjoyed it, and I learned a lot, but it was a dense book. Critics seem to dislike that a book with the chief ambition of detailing the entire history of the Romanovs was very detailed? WTF. I don’t know. I expected lots of details.
The book begins a bit earlier than the Romanovs, but of course, it has to. How does a dynasty become a dynasty? It starts so much earlier than the dynasty itself. The Romanov dynasty is a story of brutality, sex, and power. Especially brutality. Did you know that the early Romanov, Alexei, made a deal with Bogdan Khmelnitsky, who has streets named after him for handing over the territory of Ukraine over to Alexei? You know what else he did? He unleashed horrific atrocities on Catholic and Jews, including, but not limited to, children being eaten in front of their parents. Yes, still considered a hero in Russia and Ukraine.
But Peter the Great! He civilized Russia and built St. Petersburg! Yes. He did. He insisted people chew with their mouths closed, poop only in specified areas, and produced a number of guides on how to, basically, not be disgusting. But did you know Peter the Great also had is son tortured to death and was obsessed with decapitation as a biological experiment?
Sometimes brutal is putting it mildly.
In addition to 300 years worth of great and terrible tsars and tsarinas, Montefiore lays out a pretty good explanation of how Russian society worked for three centuries, as well as making some interesting points about the fall of the tsar and how the Russian habits of butchery and totalitarianism transferred to the masters of the new system. Why was it that every single time real reform was proposed the tsar ultimately cracked down and refused the reforms? This happened for hundreds of years. Why is it that Russia deposed its tsar and immediately adopted another totalitarian regime? Why do the Russian people tend to lean towards this totalitarianism?
Joseph Stalin once cynically said, “The people need a tsar.” And ultimately, that is exactly what he was, and was just as bad, if not worse, than any of his predecessors.
I enjoyed this book. Be warned, it is a massive undertaking – I think like 650 pages? It was a very long audiobook. And it is a very chronological book. Montefiore could have explored more themes rather than devote so much to effort to keeping things chronological but as someone with little education on Russian history, the chronology helped me a lot. I could see why someone with a more expansive knowledge base would find it frustrating, but it is meticulously researched, written with an edge of dark humor, and very interesting.
words in scarlet ink 